Search Engines Dirty Secrets

This special post for search engines, comes after a discussion with SME’s. The discussion related on Google SERP’s and ranking for a specific keyphrase. You may call this an ordinary topic, but yet…

Through such discussion, a very serious thing emerged. Something that directly affects the budget and marketing actions of any business.

To be exact, we identified that there is vast ignorance on how search engines really work and how they index & rank content per country. This means, how a url can get in the first page of i.e. Google/Yahoo!/Bing for France, UK, USA, etc.

Most people had no idea that keywords rank differently per country specific results.

“Ranking differently, per country? Meaning….”?

So they asked “what do you mean that keywords rank differently per country?”… This question left me dumbfounded as I thought that that was something all know.

This is serious! All online entities (eshops or not) need targeted traffic of clients. When businesses address to online audience in different countries, it is crucial to know how to do that, otherwise money and time is wasted.

Most of the businesses had no idea that you may (for example) rank for Organic results (not paid) in position 25 for country X, be in position B for country Z and in 45 for country Y. Imagine a businesses needing clients from country Y but ranking top for country Z.

That is completely out of scope, yet when metrics cannot be interpreted correctly they lead to wrong conclusions. Not to talk about sales, either…

For many of the participants that was “weird information”. At the same time, they or their digital agency, did run Adwords campaigns. Adwords needs language and country targeting setup to run properly (and save your budget). Adwords is Google, so how come that information is skipped when it comes to Organic ranking?

The truth? Many think that Adwords has a “different logic”. Which is, of course, wrong. It is a paid medium, not different logic.

Talking about tons of wasted money and time, right? Imagine doing Organic/SEO actions, paying thousands of money, having no traffic and no results from Organic ranking or… having your pages rank for the wrong country results.

But, how did they check where they rank?

Almost all checked how they rank through… their everyday browser. Which means they searched locally, but not internationally or in other country results. So, there was lack in know-how on the very issue of checking.

No cleaning up history/cache, either.

That is wrong. Ranking in different country results (which means checking for google.fr, google.co.uk, etc) is not happening like that, since Google shifts to your country results. It also takes cookies into consideration and more things.

When you don’t know how to search, that means wrong results. Wrong results, mean wrong decisions. You may rank high for a country and you may think you don’t. Imagine that too.

That means more wasted time and money and wrong actions.

Can someone trick Google?

Yes. What…? You thought… not?

Huge content industries rely on such “tricking”. Among such players are huge content/news websites too. If you read the news you may have seen that Google doesn’t follow her own “Don’t Be Evil” manifest too. There is at least the case of that UK based META search engine where Google deliberately blocked here rankings (they earned the lawsuit though and a good pack of money for that).

Tricking Google just needs knowledge, time and tools, along with some budget.

Google Dance?

Many companies make decisions on rankings, not knowing that periodically Google goes through a rapid up and down shifting of page results. One day your are number 7, the next day you are 35. Three days ago you are 5. That is a “normal” Google rankings update behavior that happens different times in a year.

For your search results, that usually means increment in URL rankings as Google re-organizes her own results.

Is SEO in 2018, other than 2017?

Yes and No. Since no-one really knows all the minute details on how everything ranks (except from some standard ones), most publish their knowledge after testing things.

Some factors were more important in the past, but not now and vice versa.

How can someone really know? Well a professional in SEO/Content Marketing/Search Engine Marketing, can will know more, right? Any professional who monitors all these changes and has the tools of the trade to do his/her work know.

Most serious of these professionals run experiments too and not with your own project.

Are there tools to conduct and track SEO for Organic ranking?

There are for those who want to be called professionals. The cost of such tools comes with the fee of a professional, that is why you see differences in the prices of “professionals” and professionals. Cheap ones usually just consult “google keywords planner”. A nice free tool but gives only a small aspect of the work needed.